How to Completely Ignore Distractions and Consistently Enter Flow States

Flow: deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life.

Most people can’t remember the last time they entered a flow state.

According to MihalyCsikszentmihalyi in his book Flow, flow is “the optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.”

Most people sleepwalk through life without ever feeling so intensely focused, time seems to stand still.

The idea of flow might have been popularized the most with professional athletes, who often describe the feeling of succeeding on the field. Gold medalists, Tour de France winners, and World Cup champions, have all repeatedly recounted how they were in flow states for their winning performances.

But how can you and I reach this level, consistently?

How can you completely ignore the 1,000 distractions around you and produce intense, unbroken focus on complicated tasks?

Here’s how you can train yourself to shut out distractions and enter flow states regularly.

Learn When You Are Primed for Flow States, Then Always Act.

“When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” -Steven Pressfield

Consistently following routines creates physiological energy spikes.

Although your mind and body are extremely fluid (you can adapt to just about anything if you wanted to), there are specific times of the day when you operate best.

Dr. Michael Breus calls this “The Power of When.” He asserts there are specific times when you are most primed for nearly every task — having the greatest sex, waking up, when to see a therapist to immediately get to the root of your issues, etc. — and people are divided into “chronotypes.”

There are 4 main chronotypes (you can take a short quiz here to see which one you most align with). Each type has a very specific timetable for entering into peak flow states.

Most people will go their whole lives without ever really knowing when they’re the most primed to operate at world-class levels. They will continue to operate as a square peg in a round hole.

“If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. But as those chunks get separated and fragmented, my productivity as a novelist drops spectacularly.” -Neal Stephenson

Remove Emotional Blockages For Optimal Performance

“It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect its presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on.” -MihalyCsikszentmihalyi

I woke up at 6AM this morning, like I usually do. I’ve found my peak creative time is early in the morning.

But instead of writing an article or journaling new ideas, all I could think about this morning was how much I hate my awful student, Daniel.

My wife and I currently teach English in South Korea. Daniel is the worst student in the entire school. He makes me so angry sometimes, I literally want to punch him (and he’s 10 years old).

I couldn’t write a single coherent thought this morning, because all I could think about was how infuriating Daniel is.

Julia Cameron once described morning journaling as “spiritual windshield wipers.” By dumping your immediate thoughts out on paper first thing in the morning, you clear away the dirt that’s obscuring your view.

It’s pointless to attempt to enter flow states until you “clean your windshield,” so to speak.

Whenever anybody wakes up — Tony Robbins, Barack Obama, Beyoncé, you — they are filled with “fluff” thoughts on largely unimportant things. Every day, we’re exposed to tens of thousands of advertisements, distractions, and trivial tasks.

You must get these thoughts out (morning journaling is an excellent, proven method) before you can see clearly focus on what truly matters.

I had to spend a good 30 minutes this morning journaling about Daniel. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about him, but I cleared my windshield of him, and I was able to write this article after.

The most important thing you can do when you wake up is dump the fluff-thoughts out so you can access the real stuff that lies underneath.

“Network tools [social media, email, the Internet] are distracting us from work that requires unbroken concentration, while simultaneously degrading our capacity to remain focused.”

The routine of the majority is to wake up and immediately check their phone. Their email, notifications, the news, and social media dictate their thoughts.

This trains them to live reactionary lives, unfocused and frantic. If you condition yourself to always respond to whatever tasks come up — no matter how trivial or mundane — you make it 10x harder to focus and enter peak states.

Choose to ignore distractions.

Reinvest Your Free Time Into Learning and Growing

“Successful people don’t see it as free time, they see it as the only time they have to do the things they really want to do in life — and they don’t take a minute for granted.” -Nicolas Cole

Your goal is to create a shift in your mindset. This will create emotional momentum, which will manifest itself into extremely focused behavior.

Most people don’t reinvest the time they’re given outside of work — they’d rather be entertained and distracted. Choosing to learn and grow on your personal time isn’t common.

But this is exactly what the world’s most successful people and top performers do. They know their ability to focus and avoid distractions is the difference between making thousands of dollars a year and millions of dollars a year.

Ironically, most people’s personal time can actually be about as stressful as work. In the words of MihalyCsikszentmihalyi:

“On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.”

Csikszentmihalyi is saying work is a positive environment because there are specific goals and priorities that naturally keep you focused.

But “free time,” for all its freedom and lack of schedule, can actually become agitating for many people.

Most people don’t realize having positive, restful free time is a skill they need to develop.

You don’t have much free time outside your obligations. It’s very tempting to use it to binge on TV, sleep, or numb out on alcohol/drugs.

If you want to be someone who is extremely focused with no tolerance for distractions, this mindset starts with how you choose to spend your free time.